Pentium compatible processor

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A Pentium-compatible processor is a 32-bit processor computer chip which supports the instructions in the IA-32 instruction set that were implemented by the original Intel Pentium processor (also known as the Classic Pentium). The IA-32 instruction set first appeared in the 80386 processor; the 80486 added a few instructions to IA-32, and the original Pentium added a few more instructions beyond that.

Here are some processors that implement all of the instructions that the original Pentium processor implemented:

The processors are typically used in IBM PC compatible computers.

Pentium-compatible processors are sometime spuriously referred to as i586-architecture processors. Later processors are also consided to be Pentium-compatible, because they still support the instructions supported by the original Pentium.

[edit] Software Compatibility

Any software that uses only instructions supported by the classic Pentium processor, and that can run on that processor is considered to be Pentium compatible.

Software that uses instructions added to IA-32 after the classic Pentium was released, and that therefore will not run on a standard Pentium, is considered not to be Pentium compatible.

[edit] 64-bit Processors

Recently, 64-bit processors, such as the AMD Athlon 64, are becoming more popular. These processors allow much larger application address spaces in computers using them. The 64-bit AMD64 instruction set is not supported by the classic Pentium processor, so 64-bit software will not work on systems using Pentium or post-Pentium processors that only support the 32-bit IA-32 instruction set.

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